What Does Should Have To Do With Selling

Writen by Dr. Gary S. Goodman

A few days ago I was thinking about my business, doing some calculations.

If I gather twenty business cards and call them all, I should be able to get ten on the line, and of the ten, I should be able to set three appointments.

From the three, I should close one.

So, it should take twenty prospects to close one deal, I told myself.

This exercise is called, doing the math of success, and every experienced salesperson does at least a version of it.

But there is a sneaky, insidious word, smack in the middle of this thought flow:

"Should."

Should isn't a factual term, and you won't find it in a text on logic, either. Mathematics doesn't speak in terms of should, and salespeople are to be cautioned about it's misuse, as well.

Should is actually a normative word, a moralistic term, as in, all good children should say please and thank-you, or I really should change my oil next week. Should pertains to desirable and undesirable, good and bad, right and wrong.

The problem in telling ourselves that we should earn one sale from calling a list of twenty prospects is it sets up an expectation that is more than a probability. If we miss, and we don't get one, we tell ourselves something is wrong.

This adds an unnecessary "charge" to our experience, a form of condemnation. Good salespeople, or at least competent ones, we tell ourselves, should get one in twenty.

But what if you get one in forty? What, then?

Are you cursed, in a slump, or a lousy salesperson?

All we know, factually, is it takes you 40 to get one, so for each sale you want to close, put 40 prospects into the calling cue.

That's reality, and "should" has nothing to do with it!

Dr. Gary S. Goodman, President of Customersatisfaction.com, is a popular keynote speaker, management consultant, and seminar leader and the best-selling author of 12 books, including Reach Out & Sell Someone® and Monitoring, Measuring & Managing Customer Service, and the audio program, "The Law of Large Numbers: How To Make Success Inevitable," published by Nightingale-Conant. He is a frequent guest on radio and television, worldwide. A Ph.D. from USC's Annenberg School, a Loyola lawyer, and an MBA from the Peter F. Drucker School at Claremont Graduate University, Gary offers programs through UCLA Extension and numerous universities, trade associations, and other organizations in the United States and abroad. He holds the rank of Shodan, 1st Degree Black Belt in Kenpo Karate. He is headquartered in Glendale, California, and he can be reached at (818) 243-7338 or at: gary@customersatisfaction.com.